The Maker Studio at Kansas City’s Science Center, Science City, just got a huge boost from Ultimaker B.V., a leading manufacturers of 3D printers, based in the Netherlands. The 3D printer manufacturer just gifted nine new printers to the Science Center adding to the six existing Utilimaker 2 models already at the Maker Studio, bringing the total up to 15.

Science City is an educational center in the historical landmark and civic center Union Station Kansas City in Kansas City, Missouri run by Union Station Kansas City, Inc. with the mission of bringing science and history education and entertainment to the community. With these additional 3D printers, educators who work there expect to increase outreach to the public, and especially children to promote STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) education efforts.

“We couldn’t be more grateful to Ultimaker for this tremendous gift,” Luis Rodriguez, Maker Studio manager, said. “These easy-to-use and reliable machines will allow us to serve more children, adults, and families in the Greater Kansas City metro area. With these models, we not only have the ability to print items up to one foot tall but most importantly, because of their size, we gain the portability that will make it even easier to deliver and support Science City’s hands-on programming.”

Thanks to this donation, Science City now has one of the largest installations of 3D printers in an education-focused, publicly accessible location.

The 3D printers are open to the public during walk-up workshops and demos, school field trips, professional development programs for teachers and special events such as Make48–the 48 hour invent-a-thon weekend scheduled for October 2-4 at Science City.

According to Jerry Baber, executive vice president and COO of Union Station Kansas City Incorporated, Science City sees over 200,000 visitors annually. That’s a great deal of people to educate.

Ultimaker 3D printers

Netherlands-based Utilimaker produces several different types of 3D printers. Amid those donated to Science City are the Ultimaker 2 model as well as he Ultimaker 2 Extended and Ultimaker 2 Go.

The standard Ultimaker 2 is a quiet, 20 micron printer that uses fused filament fabrication (FFF) and runs at approximately 30 mm/s to 300 mm/s. The Ultimaker 2 Extended is a 30 centimeter tall printing platform that increases the height of possible prints over the Ultimaker 2. And finally, the Ultimaker 2 Go is a lightweight platform designed to be small, compact and more readily portable—of course, it’s just as versatile and capable as its “larger” siblings and is capable of amazing prints.

For customers, Ultimaker also provides Cura 3D software for preparing builds for printing in an advanced UI.

And the Ultimaker 3D platforms also come with a number of upgrades including Dual Extrusion Kits, upgrades to heat beds and extruder drives, and even a way to print directly from SD cards. For the young-at-heart there’s even a doodle add-on called Doodle3D that connects a smartphone or tablet via wifi for wireless printing (and doodling.)

Image credit:  Ultimaker B.V.